SparkFun Electronics Commentsurn:uuid:214d0e4e-f1b1-d287-ce26-ac5b4c9f82492015-03-03T15:36:09-07:00SparkFun ElectronicsCustomer #149642 on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraCustomer #149642urn:uuid:6bf4e003-4815-c811-7715-110f534a3e502012-11-17T09:01:51-07:00<p>It would be interesting to see the sensor responses and the image quality with the other two sensors https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11195 the cylindrical one and the Avago ADJD sensor.</p>Customer #149642 on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraCustomer #149642urn:uuid:9845eee7-1b35-cf2b-0e2b-1c4ac39c89da2012-11-17T09:00:24-07:00<p>It is possible to sweep the servos with a resolution of 180/(1400 to 1800) Us. You could either write the custom PWM code in WinAvr or even by modifying the Arduino servo lib to taken in the angle argument to be the pulsewidth rather than the angle. Instead of using a rack and pinion gear arrangment you could use a pulley and timing belt with smaller teeth using the same servos and you would get a resolution equal to that of the steppers with the same servos. It is a really nice project. I like you idea of taking the basic fundamental and working on it. At a fundamental level you are creating some thing new. I was thinking if the the frequency of the operation of the color sensor is high say at 1000 Hz then could it be possible to use a scanning/rotating mirror arrangement to read light back.I know the reverse is possible using a laser. If you keep a rotating mirror before a laser then you get a line instead of a dot. And if you have second mirror which rotates perpendicularly to the first and also does a second reflection of the laser you can get an entire X-Y image out of this laser projector arrangement. I was thinking what if one can read light back with such an arrangement.I wonder if additional focusing optics would be required? But if this works then one can reduce the scan time by a huge factor and may be even read successive frames as in a video.</p>NPoole on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraNPooleurn:uuid:be194234-4999-66b9-0c7b-707cc36177552012-09-17T10:00:23-06:00<p>Yeah, it was sub-optimal, that&rsquo;s for sure, lol. A pinhole with a photodiode was my original idea (I explained that in part of the video that was cut out)</p>
<p>You can&rsquo;t fairly call this a clone of a DSLR, though, It&rsquo;s much more like a point and shoot. There&rsquo;s no &ldquo;reflex,&rdquo; thus no &ldquo;SLR&rdquo;</p>Calif on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraCalifurn:uuid:eeda5bec-9cd0-cd76-ca6d-8557a07c0f8c2012-09-16T15:17:55-06:00<p>Trying to capture color doesn&rsquo;t look worth it. Would be neat to see a pinhole with a bare photodiode on an XY table. That&rsquo;s a novel capability rather than a clone of a DSLR.</p>NPoole on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraNPooleurn:uuid:07e51981-4f6a-a1ec-94c1-15153c5e69d32012-09-14T14:21:22-06:00<p>I&rsquo;m thankful everyday, man</p>Jade on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraJadeurn:uuid:113a9e73-3601-8f66-71bf-c63c434c30322012-09-13T18:40:46-06:00<p>Hehe. I built a similar camera using your Sharp distance sensor. I mounted it right on the servo head eliminating the need for the complex gantry mechanism.</p>
<p>www.sparkfun.com/products/8958?</p>
<p>Check the comment section, it has illustrations. I later made a switchable head accommodating various sensors to achieve multiple spectrum analysis.</p>mikep on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY Cameramikepurn:uuid:c8681a2e-8e18-bbe3-4893-245c862f7f6e2012-09-13T16:35:37-06:00<p>You really have the awesomest job evar, you know that right?</p>NPoole on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraNPooleurn:uuid:401a8da3-01db-62c3-1c39-72cc45cd5bac2012-09-11T09:55:18-06:00<p>I used those to build an XY rig for the MechanoPong project, I wasn&rsquo;t impressed with the amount of power they had. (They aren&rsquo;t actually meant to carry a load, after all)</p>
<p>You can check out the MechanoPong video <a href="https://www.sparkfun.com/news/686" rel="nofollow" >here</a></p>NPoole on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraNPooleurn:uuid:eb3f4a67-770e-0498-08fb-f858b49524f92012-09-11T09:44:39-06:00<p>I think that depends largely on the ambient light conditions. I&rsquo;m having a hard time envisioning what you&rsquo;re doing but as long as the sensor was adequately &lsquo;washed&rsquo; in reflected laser light, it should definitely register a spike in the green channel. You may need to write something so it can calibrate itself to the ambient green level and adjust the trigger threshold. It shouldn&rsquo;t be too difficult to pull of though.</p>gdgt on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY Cameragdgturn:uuid:a5e943a3-4221-1bd0-d8cf-e18b226167492012-09-11T09:40:47-06:00<p>https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10976
Seems like these slide pots would have been perfect for controlling the x-y position of your sensor. Any reason you didn&rsquo;t use them?</p>
<p>Awesome project btw, this is the kind of thing that keeps me coming back to this site!</p>chartle on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY Camerachartleurn:uuid:d2445092-a314-b63e-c302-838d5a8c7b3e2012-09-11T08:39:45-06:00<p>Why on heavens earth did you NOT use red Sparkfun Boxes? They are everywhere including being used as set decoration. I kind of thought it was your mascot and you have Meet and Greets with it like at Disney World. :-)</p>MattOldred on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraMattOldredurn:uuid:73fc7c81-6ac9-5a9c-0b32-bbf29c32d1892012-09-11T05:07:23-06:00<p>If you swap the colour light sensor for a thermopile, this would be great to make a cheap(ish) thermal camera for looking at the heat distribution of PCBs. I really like the leap from your first prototype&rsquo;s sweeping motion to the XY motion of the final B.U.C.</p>EvilTwin on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraEvilTwinurn:uuid:31fcd044-7b15-a556-8c5c-f976995cd86e2012-09-10T21:36:01-06:00<p>Help me out Nick, you would be the perfect person to answer this, If I put the here-mentioned colour sensor face up in the bottom of a white box, then shine one of the lower power green lasers you stock into the white box from a distance, could the sensor pick up the laser as hitting the box?</p>PoorCoco on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraPoorCocourn:uuid:962dbd25-070b-e993-ace0-2931190431782012-09-10T17:49:22-06:00<p>By the way, one way you could automatically white-balance the image after the scan is done would go like this:</p>
<ul>
<li>Scan through the data and find the RGB values of the 5th percentile and the 95th percentile for each channel.</li>
<li>Remap the data on each channel so the values above correspond to 5% and 95% of the total (0-255) range. Say, 12–243.</li>
<li>Draw the image based on the processed data. The normalized ranges of the RGB values should make the brightest colour white and the darkest colour black. (Of course, if the object has a strong colour, like a Sparkfun box, that image may get a lot worse; it&rsquo;s useful for average images however.)</li>
</ul>
PoorCoco on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraPoorCocourn:uuid:54a64db7-3205-46d7-e08e-0e9e380c6e362012-09-10T17:41:24-06:00<p>This reminds me of the high-end Dainippon Screen drum scanner at the prepress shop I worked with. That was also a single-pixel device, but the originals were mounted on a high-speed glass drum; the optical system was a halogen bulb feeding the focal point through (I think) 8 fibre optic lines to a set of photomultiplier tubes with a sensitivity of INDIVIDUAL PHOTONS. In transmission mode (for transparent originals) it could differentiate 5.00D from 5.01D, and its resolution limit was something like 5,000 pixels per inch. Fabulous!</p>CF on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraCFurn:uuid:acaff00d-2be2-d5fe-8eb9-17c09e5754282012-09-10T17:04:09-06:00<p>This sort of reminds me of old mechanical TV.</p>Pelican on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraPelicanurn:uuid:58bfb501-6a85-59a3-d10b-3a2eebc8a2262012-09-10T15:13:33-06:00<p>Oh, this reminds me so much of Steve Ciarcia&rsquo;s digital imaging games in Byte, back in the mid-80&rsquo;s. He wasn&rsquo;t getting color, and his images were elongated by the geometry of the DRAM he was using, but that was when I knew that film cameras were doomed, at least for casual point-and-shoot usage.</p>customer207 on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY Cameracustomer207urn:uuid:4aed4b1c-1b75-ebdd-3571-ff5f859d09802012-09-10T13:09:15-06:00<p>That was super cool! Thanks for &ldquo;making&rdquo; me waste 15min at work!</p>NPoole on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraNPooleurn:uuid:cba3ff63-cf3b-0b93-3e0a-d7aecc6d381f2012-09-10T11:44:43-06:00<p>Thanks for the heads up!</p>healthyfatboy on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY Camerahealthyfatboyurn:uuid:64dd1b55-b37b-a405-cc7d-b1afaf061d872012-09-10T11:41:06-06:00<p>Make sure to get either the BCI or DCI version of that sensor. They are the smallest FOV versions of the sensor.
They both take different filter settings to get to work properly. I have the BCI version of the sensor and tried to use the DCI settings from Max&rsquo;s website (www.cheap-thermocam.tk) and it ended up not working out. I put it back to the stock settings and it seems fine. Just be sure to read out the values before you change anything.</p>TECH GEEK on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraTECH GEEKurn:uuid:7b7382fb-2e0c-0d2c-ff96-ae1010ea45d82012-09-10T11:33:14-06:00<p>Flippen Awezome!!! :D</p>NPoole on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraNPooleurn:uuid:2e697285-0043-ce76-0570-d868325436d62012-09-10T11:18:52-06:00<p>As soon as you said DRAM, I knew where this was going. That is an awesome hack, I love it!</p>scharkalvin on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY Camerascharkalvinurn:uuid:4ced459f-c3cb-6641-6cc3-b38b3e5275022012-09-10T11:13:13-06:00<p>Years ago a coworker and I were fooling around with his Apple II computer. We interfaced an old 4k x 1 22pin (400mil wide) dram to the machine using a GP IO card. What we had done was to carefully peel off the metal lid from the dram chip (it was a ceramic case) and glue a microscope slide cover in place of the lid. We tried several different brands of drams and found one that had TWO groups of storage cells, both of which were 2x1 rectangles in size. You can find dram chips with a single large block of cells, and also some with 4 groups of square cell blocks. Anyway the idea was that the capacitor storage cells in a dram are sensitive to light which will cause them to discharge faster. So what we did was to write all ones (or zeros) to the cells and then read them back after a short interval. I found a short focus lens out of a cheap camera&rsquo;s viewfinder that I had taken apart. We mounted the lens and the IC in a jig so we could focus the lens onto the dram storage area. The software would charge the cells, wait, and read back. It then plotted the resulting &ldquo;image&rdquo; onto the Apple&rsquo;s graphic screen. By re-reading the cells we hoped to get some gray scale, since the longer we waited before a cell discharged the less bright was the light on it. Our test subject was the wattage label on the top of a 60 watt light bulb. We were really excited when we saw the &ldquo;60&rdquo; on the Apple II screen!</p>NPoole on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraNPooleurn:uuid:c83550e5-e46d-a4d1-43bf-fe317143aedb2012-09-10T11:04:10-06:00<p>Yeah, I&rsquo;m gunning for the position of &ldquo;Professional Mad Scientist&rdquo; but I&rsquo;d settle for &ldquo;Executive Director of Cartoon Villainy&rdquo;</p>Lefty4000 on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraLefty4000urn:uuid:916a7c5a-8a52-a8a2-e00f-984ac553ea7e2012-09-10T10:55:44-06:00<p>I want to have an office like that someday. Jumper wires hanging down. 3 1602 displays chilling off of a shelf. A hot air rework station along with multiple multimeters. I would be in heaven. &ldquo;Oh hey whatcha up to?&rdquo; &ldquo;Oh just inventing!&rdquo; &ldquo;GOOD! thats what we pay you for&rdquo;</p>NPoole on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraNPooleurn:uuid:0a3a6b67-8d29-f3cb-c686-4bb935259c122012-09-10T10:50:01-06:00<p>What I&rsquo;d really like to do with this project, going forward, is replace the color light sensor with our MLX90614 IR Thermometer. If I get any interesting results, I&rsquo;ll try to mention it in my next video!</p>NPoole on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraNPooleurn:uuid:1b75194f-2412-c149-3d9a-f52b79371f392012-09-10T10:47:43-06:00<p>Absolutely, and it would&rsquo;ve made the process somewhat faster, I would&rsquo;ve also avoided the &ldquo;missing pixels&rdquo; problem. The short answer is: I just didn&rsquo;t. Just getting this project to spit out a photo in the allotted time was a bit of a challenge.</p>
<p>If you were scanning back and forth, though, it would be a pretty quick change in the code. Whereas now it basically does this:</p>
<pre><code>while(y isn't maxed out){
while(x isn't maxed out){move x 1 and send serial}
}
</code></pre>
<p>It could do something like this:</p>
<pre><code>while(y isn't maxed out){
if((y%2)==0){
while(x isn't maxed out){move x 1 and send serial}}
if((y%2)!=0){
while(x isn't wiped out){move x -1 and send serial}}
</code></pre>DrPhibes on Engineering Roundtable - Nick and his DIY CameraDrPhibesurn:uuid:cff76679-6111-d758-14dc-0a4b73ad00242012-09-10T10:22:41-06:00<p>Why did you have the servo return to the x origin after every line? Would it be possible to use the x return to scan the next line?</p>